With the start of the New Year, we’ve decided to review just what a museum is and what you will see when you visit an art museum. Spoiler alert: It won’t be dinosaur bones.
In the News: Where Does Art Belong?
We asked our education intern, Laura Heirigs, to weigh in on a news story that had caught our eye, a competition in Switzerland to have a Picasso in your house for one day. Read on to get her thoughts on art and where it belongs: in our homes or in museums.
Art Term Tuesday: Permanent Collection
Seven distinct gallery spaces, over a dozen phenomenal sculptures spread throughout our grounds, and two giant doors we try extremely hard to hide in plain sight! We’ve featured several artworks in our “Treasures from the Vault” series, offering a peek behind our “barn doors”, but we can’t possible feature everything in our collection! We have over 6,500 items in our permanent collection, so even if we featured a new piece every day it would take us 19 years to show them all. How did we get so many items in our collection? Where did they come from? Why can’t they all be on display at once? Find out in today’s Art Term Tuesday!
Do You Get to Touch the Art? Working in a Museum: A Day with the Vice President and COO of FWMoA, Amanda Shepard
When people learn we work in a museum, the first question we often get asked is "What do you do all day? Do you just get to stare at art?". The follow-up question is, usually, "Wait, do you get to touch the art?". It often comes as a surprise, therefore, when they learn that many museum jobs do not include handling objects at all! Therefore, I sat down with Amanda Shepard, our Vice President and COO, to talk about her background, what her job entails, and if she is ever disappointed that she doesn't get to touch the art.